Marmota Ltd (ASX:MEU) has released the first recordings of visible gold at its Aurora Tank project in South Australia.
The project is 50 kilometres from WPG Resources Ltd's (ASX:WPG) Challenger Gold Mine which has produced more than one million ounces of gold.
In November 2017 WPG and Marmota entered into a memorandum of understanding regarding a possible cooperative agreement.
Potential for ore treatment
This has provided the opportunity for the two parties to come to an agreement whereby gold from Aurora Tank can be treated at the Challenger plant.
While Aurora Tank is only at an early stage, it has returned some extremely high grades including a one-metre intersection at 101 g/t gold.
Wider intersections included 10 metres at 6 g/t and 5 metres at 13 g/t.
Highly anomalous gold from samples
Ten of 14 samples from a recent diamond drill program showed highly anomalous gold from 5.9 g/t to 43 g/t.
Visible gold could also be seen in eight of the 10 samples.
Management said the most common host mineral is quartz, indicating that the mineralogy is primary gold.
Primary gold’s characteristics
Where primary gold is present, some specimen gold nuggets may form if the quartz vein gold physically erodes.
These deposits are often characterised by large tonnage, low-grade ore.
However, early stage results certainly indicate that the near-surface grades are high.